Weekend Words: Tea

This week, the Tea Party reared its ugly head and Eric Cantor is singing the blues.

“Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone.”

—Hilaire Belloc

“If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.”

—Abraham Lincoln

“Tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally coarse in their nervous sensibilities will always be the favorite beverage of the intellectual.”

—Thomas De Quincey

“The best quality tea must have creases like the leather boot of Tartar horsemen, curl like the dewlap of a mighty bullock, unfold like a mist rising out of a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr, and be wet and soft like a fine earth newly swept by rain.”

—Yu Lu

“When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I makes water I makes water… Begob, ma’am, says Mrs. Cahill, God send you don’t make them in one pot.”

—James Joyce, Ulysses

“And the sooner the tea’s out of the way, the sooner we can get out the gin.